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What you are seeing now is a sculpture of an artist who tried to recreate a moment that existed for merely an instant. This instant can never be truly recreated, of course, but Cornelia Parker sure as hell will try.

She prides herself in archiving the unusual, the overlooked, the moment when everything is in movement and we, as humans, cannot perceive all of the stimulus in the moment. She plays with shadows and tries to make movement in things that are still so that we can stop and admire a moment that we couldn’t before. A British sculptor, Cornelia Parker lives and works in London on continually installing her unorthodox artwork.

I was first put onto her trail by a friend, and now I just can’t get enough. Parker suspends items, often burnt wood or stone, with fishing wire. If you take a gander at the piece to the left, you can see the way in which it almost feels like it is fragmenting before your very eyes. To see them in person is even more unnerving. Suddenly, it seems as if time has stopped, and you are simply observing this for a moment before it continues on.

She hosted an installation recently at the ICA in Boston, where my friend stumbled across her works. What a great discovery!

She doesn’t only work with wood, but I feel so drawn to her pieces that are wood! Let’s take a peek at a few that also demonstrate what she captures without being simply a burnt shed, shall we?

She struggles with the volatile and unusual. A rockslide in motion? Not too difficult for this sculptor. What is truly inspiring about her installations is to walk around them and perceive them from every angle. New things pop out to you at every turn! Everything hangs in suspension. It truly is an eerie, awe-inspiring sight and experience and I encourage anyone who can to endorse her work and try to visit when an installation comes to your area.

In conclusion, I’d like to stop and think about for a moment what makes art so wonderful. Our modern perception of art, full of controversies and hypocrisies, often frustrates me. How much I long to return to the times of aesthetic impressionism or glorious realism! But then I turn to de Kooning, to Wilde, to all sorts of 20th and 21st century painters who I enjoy and I can’t help but be grateful that I live in an era when I can appreciate whatever sort of art I’d like!